The Woman in the Window is a tale of lust and money, wrapped up in the idea of how life becomes less exciting as you approach middle age. Professor Richard Wanley is a middle-aged man bored with how life is treating him. This boredom is soon to dissipate, however, when he and his friends become obsessed with the portrait of a woman in a shop window. On his way home one night, Richard meets this woman purely by chance and ends up going back to her apartment to look at more artist impressions of her. This ends in tragedy, when her boyfriend comes knocking, and ends up discovering our hero in his girl's apartment! A struggle ensues and the boyfriend ends up dead...Richard agrees to hide the body in order to keep the pair of them from spending time behind bars.

The cast is put to good use, with the great Edward G. Robinson doing a fine job with the lead role. He portrays his character admirably, and the scenes where the finger of suspicion drifts over him sees Robinson at his best. Joan Bennett plays his female counterpart. This beautiful woman is great as the heroine, and it's her performance that gives the film that golden Hollywood feel. The ending is one that could easily have gone wrong, but Director Fritz Lang makes good of it, and it actually makes sense of little nuisances, such as the fact that Robinson is allowed to accompany his policeman friend to a murder scene early on in the film.

CAST

Edward G. Robinson as Professor Richard Wanley
Joan Bennett as Alice Reed
Raymond Massey as District Attorney Frank Lalor
Edmund Breon as Dr. Michael Barkstane
Dan Duryea as Heidt
Thomas E. Jackson as Inspector Jackson, Homicide Bureau
Arthur Loft as Claude Mazard
Dorothy Peterson as Mrs. Wanley
Robert Blake as Dickie Wanley
Carol Cameron as Elsie Wanley
George 'Spanky' McFarland as Boy Scout who finds Mazard's Body
Joe Devlin as Toll Collector on Henry Hudson Parkway